ARCHIVES
Nell McCafferty
News broke this morning that veteran activist and writer Nell McCafferty had died in her County Donegal nursing home. She was a founding member of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement, a campaigning journalist and playwright. Nell was born in 1944 in the Bogside and...
Michael Gaughan’s Anniversary
Fifty years ago today, 3 June 1974, Michael Gaughan, from Ballina, County Mayo, died on hunger strike in Parkhurst Prison. Michael was one of the earliest IRA Volunteers to be imprisoned in England in the post-1969 phase of the struggle, sentenced to seven years on 23...
‘But still we resist’ – Bobby Sands
Letters and poems of Bobby Sands continue to be discovered forty-three years after his death on hunger strike on 5 May 1981. Last September the legendary British peace campaigner and poet Pat Arrowsmith died at the age of ninety-three. Among her mementoes was a...
Death of Khader Adnan
The Bobby Sands Trust has sent its condolences to Randa Mousa and her family after the death on hunger strike of her husband Khader Adnan. Khader was the victim of a punitive and cruel Israeli occupation that singled him out for his vocal stance on Palestinian...
‘The Lark’ continues to inspire
Bobby Sands’s life and sacrifice continues to inspire singers and songwriters, of which, of course, Bobby himself was one, his songs and poetry regularly being recorded four decades after his death on hunger strike on 5 May 1981. In January Anne Rynne (sister of...
International Reaction to death of Bobby Sands
The death of Bobby Sands made international headlines around the world and was quickly followed by protests in various cities against Margaret Thatcher and British interests, as this new, short film (below) shows. In America, New York State governor Hugh Carey and New...
Fassbender on Bobby Sands
‘This film is definitely the closest to my heart out of all the work I have done…’ So said the German-Irish actor Michael Fassbender during a fascinating and extraordinary hour-long interview with host Juan Banco at last week’s (9-20 November) LEFFEST in Portugal. In...
Surfing Into Life on a Bathboard
This is the enigmatic title of former blanket man Jake Mac Siacais’s memoir which previously was published as gaeilge. Here, guest reviewer Roy Greenslade gives his opinion on the book, part of the growing canon of prolific republican prison literature. -oo0oo- ‘I...
On The Blanket
Many republican memoirs have been published in recent years covering a variety of prison experiences, from Síle Darragh’s John Lennon Is Dead, to Jaz McCann’s 6000 Days. Eoghan ‘Gino’ Mac Cormaic, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, first published his book as...
Death of Liam McCloskey
The death has taken place of Liam McCloskey, one of the surviving hunger strikers from 1981. Liam was originally from Dungiven, County Derry. He had been arrested in an early morning raid on his home in December 1976. Also arrested at that time was Kevin Lynch, his...
